


severance

by t4tterdemalion



Category: Ghost Adventures (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ghost Adventures Crew, Ghosts, If You Squint - Freeform, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, That's the only reason this exists, and zak couldn't find him, ep 6 season 1, nick is in danger, no beta we die like men, some old dude with a blowtorch, this is inspired by that one episode, where nick got shut in the corpse drawer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:14:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24748189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t4tterdemalion/pseuds/t4tterdemalion
Summary: Zak realizes something is wrong exactly too late to turn and catch the freezer door as it swings almost gently shut and latches with a massive clang.
Relationships: Zak Bagans/Nick Groff
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	severance

They’re filming in the kitchen of a dangerously haunted abandoned hotel in the middle of a ghost town, Nick taking EVP recordings a few feet inside the interior of a massive walk-in freezer where a dishwasher, several cats, and a janitor froze to death, Zak looking away into the corners, something ringing in his ears. He realizes something is wrong exactly too late to turn and catch the freezer door as it swings almost gently shut and latches with a massive clang.

The sound reverberates through the silent, dusty kitchen, and then Aaron and Zak both move at once, converging on the latch of the door as Nick’s yells filter faintly through the steel, sounding like he’s being attacked, being possessed, suffocating alone in the dark with predatory spirits circling, waiting for him to curl up and die—

“Zak, Zak, it’s not gonna open, calm down, I can hear him through the headphones,” Aaron is saying, tugging at his arm, and Zak realizes he’s been practically bruising his hands on the latch and the handle, trying blindly, desperately to open the heavy door.

Aaron shoves the master headphones into his hands, and he pulls them on so he can hear Nick’s voice, loud and clear, “Zak Aaron holy shit it’s so fucking dark I can’t see anything please tell me you can open the door, please please please—“

Zak thuds his fist against the door, Morse code for NO, and Nick half-coughs something like a sob.

Aaron is looking around for something in the kitchen they could pry the freezer open with, and Zak grabs him by the elbow. “Listen,” he says low and deadly, “You have to go get somebody. Find a fucking way, I don’t care if you have to drive three miles to a payphone, cause there’s no signal out here, you have to get someone.”

Nick’s voice is in his ear, and he catches something about “—why is it so cold—“

Something deep in his gut pulls him towards the door, makes him press his hands against it, trying to shove himself through the surface to Nick. “Aaron, he says it’s freezing in there.”

“I thought the electricity was off!”

“It is!”

Aaron scrubs both his hands through his hair, looking like he’s about to cry. “So, what, you want me to leave you here, isolated in a hostile environment in the middle of the night, with nothing but a tape recorder, headphones, a mic, and a flashlight?!”

“Yes!” Zak roars, “And that’s what you’re going to do, because otherwise Nick might DIE!”

 _“I don’t want to be the only survivor!_ ” Aaron burst out, immediately slapping his hands over his mouth and blanching.

Zak feels like all the air’s been knocked out of him. The thought of Aaron, alone, coming back to find their bodies, is so sobering that he actually flinches. “Aaron....”

“I know. I know, Zak. I’m going.” Aaron looks so small, all of a sudden, and Zak remembers the half-broken staircase they had to descend to get here, all the cold spots and black mists in the corners of his eyes. “Aaron, I... Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” And he’s pretending like it really is fine, he’s setting down his equipment and handing the extra heavy-duty flashlight over to Zak, giving him a crushing hug, steadying himself for a long journey alone. Aaron goes, not looking back, and Zak is left in a small oasis of light against the fridge door. He settles against it, ignoring the biting cold that’s threatening to numb his skin, and thumps HI to break the silence that’s settled while he and Aaron were arguing.

Nick sighs into his ear, and Zak feels himself sigh in response, even if Nick can’t hear him.

“This mic has enough battery for another hour and a half,” Nick says quietly.

“Hopefully it won’t take that long,” Zak says to himself, closing his eyes and beginning his vigil.

For the next half hour, Nick just rambles into his ear, soothing Zak with the familiar sound of his voice. The pauses between sentences start to lengthen around the 45 minute mark, and Zak listens to the shudder of bone-deep cold start to affect Nick’s speech, his breath growing shallow and shaky.

An hour has passed, and Nick speaks up after far too long of a pause. “Remember when you lost me in that asylum? You locked me in the mortuary drawer and then forgot where the room was.” He draws a slightly deeper breath. “I was absolutely terrified, thinking nothing could be worse than being trapped in there for hours while you were just a hallway away, searching while I slowly suffocated.”

Zak swallows hard, and Nick is quiet. He can hear the chattering of teeth now.

“This is worse,” Nick whispers, and Zak tips his head back against the door, squeezing his eyes shut. “You’re only inches away, but I can’t hear you, I can’t see you. I don’t even know if you’re still th-there, or if it’s just the spirits fucking with me—“ His voice breaks into the quiet, raspy gasps of someone who’s trying their hardest not to cry.

Zak clenches his jaw, ignoring the wetness rolling down his face, and thumps out SHAVE-AND-A-HAIR-CUT. Nick laughs wetly, and Zak hears the faintest TWO-BITS on the other side of the door. “Now I know it’s you, Zak.” He pauses. “Zak, I think I’m... there’s someone else in here.” A shudder of breath. “And it’s so cold. I’m so, so cold.”

The pit of Zak’s stomach is a slowly growing ball of ice. He feels hollowed out, like he’s being sucked slowly away, like he’s drifting away into the darkness with Nick. An hour and 15 minutes.

“Zak.... I can feel it watching me.” Nick is barely even speaking at this point, just barely breathing into his mic. He’s crying, Zak can hear it, the rattle in his throat, and static suddenly begins in the headphones, a low crackle.

Nick’s breathing is frantic. “God, Zak, please, oh god, I can’t take this, please just let me out, let me go, Zak, help me, help me, hel—“

An ear-piercing squeal of white noise and feedback forces Zak to tear the headphones from his head. “Nick! Oh, fuck, oh my god—“

There’s thumping inside the freezer, and Zak collapses, scratching in vain at the rusted surface, screaming Nick’s name, and there’s a beam of light from behind him, Aaron come back with some old man and a really intense looking blowtorch, and Zak is yelling for them to cut the latch _now, right fucking now._

The door finally swings ajar, and Zak almost burns himself hauling it open. Inside is total silence and Nick's crumpled form laying just inside the threshold. Zak is on his knees beside him in an instant, lifting and shaking, holding Nick to his chest.

Nick is so cold he’s trembling, and his lips are blue, but there’s frosty breath visible in the air and Zak just presses him close, picks him up fully and cradles him and walks out of the freezer and gets him up the stairs and into the van. He gets in the backseat, puts Nick in, piles him with blankets. His eyes are open, but only the whites are visible, and his fingers are all bluish and purple. Zak is shivering too, so he crawls under the blankets with Nick the popsicle as Aaron comes running out of the hotel with this old man and all their equipment and that fucking crazy blowtorch, and they peel out to the hospital, 20 miles away.

At the hospital they wrap Nick in those crinkly heat-conserving blankets and do blood work and just generally warm him up in a very safe and medically approved way. He wakes up halfway through and heaves freezing bile onto the floor for five minutes, then forces the nurses to let him check out. On his way past where Zak is sitting with his own crinkly blanket, Nick grabs him by the wrist and tows him away. No one questions this.

The van is silent on the drive back to the hotel. Aaron drops them off and says he’s going to return this old man back to wherever he got him from, and Zak puts his arm around Nick’s waist and drags them both into the elevator and into the room and into the bathroom.

Nick props the door wide open with the garbage can and Zak sits on the floor with his eyes closed and listens to the scalding hot shower splatter as Nick moves, leaning back against the bathroom cabinets and reveling in the humidity. He listens to Nick’s wet footprints leave the bathroom and strips to step under the water.

And oh, it’s glorious, so fucking hot it’s almost painful, and wet footprints reenter the bathroom and Nick shoves aside the curtain and gets in with him, pressed all along Zak’s back and side, like a fucking brand. Zak blinks the water out of his eyes and turns off the shower, turns to Nick and kisses him long and slow, both of them dripping wet.

They get out of the shower and Zak throws himself into one of the beds followed immediately by Nick, and they roll around until the comforter is over both their heads. Nick cranes his neck to kiss Zak, and Zak hauls him closer, licking sloppy at his lips. Nick is crying silently, so Zak wraps himself around Nick like an octopus and kisses the tears off his face. “Zak,” Nick gasps, running his fingers over Zak’s scalp again and again, and Zak presses “Nick, Nick, Nick,” into the skin of his neck. They generate enough heat between them to drive away the cold, as close as they could possibly be and trying to get closer, sharing breath. There’s rust under Zak’s broken fingernails and the unnatural white tint hasn’t quite left Nick’s skin, but they fit together and make something stronger than the dark. When they wake up, they’ll reach out for the other automatically, like it’s always been this way.

And they’ll go on.

**Author's Note:**

> wow I really wrote fanfiction about ghost adventures huh  
> at least it's early ghost adventures when they had hair
> 
> there's not a lot of people that will ever read this, so if you do.....  
> tell me something in the comments. leave it here for me to find.   
> it doesn't have to be about the story.   
> it just has to be real.


End file.
